Yup.
TBF, I hadn’t heard about it before reading this thread, either. It’s only on social media that people talk about this stuff.
I’m on all sorts of social media and it’s only here that I’ve heard this even being mentioned. I’ve seen the Dr. Seuss stuff in a number of places, but I really don’t think this issue has much traction unless you’re actively digging for it.
People are a lot more attached to their childhood memories than to their shampoo.
Yeah, their childhood memories of books they probably never even heard of much less read. But, yes, I know what you mean.
I’m not too bothered about the Dr Seuss thing because I really didn’t read those books. But it does make me wonder where it’ll end. Lots of works that don’t fit modern sensibilities are still of value.
Hopefully with racial minorities being equal in our society
It might help if you consulted some?
This is such a silly argument. The OP is about a corporation making a move after consulting with 10,000 consumers across 9 countries:
People who oppose anti-racist initiatives, no matter how superficial those initiatives might be, love to pretend that it’s only white people doing these things without talking to any BIPOC as part of the process.
That’s a canard, and a shameful one to use.
You mean like Unilever did? Asking 10,000 people and finding that 70% preferred not setting one hair or skin type as “normal”? (On preview beaten to it.)
This is not their being “woke”. It is market research driven. Now my skeptical side suspects that the message is that no one is normal: everyone has problems that their products can fix. That was my three older sisters. The two with tight curly hair were always trying to straighten it and the one with near blonde straight hair was trying to gets hers to curl!
I also have gathered that “relaxers” used to be very profitable big business in the Black hair world, and as that has receded companies traditionally aiming at Black consumers are also realizing that other groups can use what they sell too.
The color that matters here is the color of money.
As for Dr. Seuss, google “Dr. Seuss Racist,” and one of the first links is from NPR’s code switch team, and is written by Tiara Jenkins. The study that is most devastating to Seuss, The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, Anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss’s Children’s Books Supremacy in Dr. Seuss’s Children’s Books, is written by Katie Ishizuka and Ramón Stephens.
This is not, as you suggest, a bunch of white people white-knighting for BIPOC neighbors without “consulting” them. Those who get all fussy about it, however, tend to look like this or this.
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But, y’know, I guess there are other ways to consult minorities, and perhaps we should follow your lead instead:
? “You”? AFAICT, none of the posters here is in any way responsible for the Dr. Seuss Enterprises decision to withdraw six children’s books from their list, or for the Unilever decision to modify their shampoo branding. If you’re worried that minority groups were not sufficiently consulted in making those decisions, then I think you need to take it up with the companies in question.
But I don’t think you actually need to be worried on that score. The issue of racist imagery in Dr. Seuss books, and the desirability of decoupling childhood literacy efforts in general from Dr. Seuss materials in particular, has been circulating in childhood ed circles for several years. Here, for example, is a 2018 post written by a Black teacher and education blogger:
I’m pretty sure the people at Dr. Seuss Enterprises were aware of these kinds of discussions for quite a while before they made their announcement earlier this month about not republishing the books.
Similarly, you can find discussions all over the internet of the “normalization” of beauty standards to reflect typical characteristics of white people, from as far back as 2010. Here’s another blogger (who is Black) from October 2020:
If you think this sort of public discussion didn’t play a role in Unilever’s relabeling decision, I suspect you’re underestimating the alertness and acuity of their marketing department.
(ETA: as the previous posters have already observed!)
Many “culture wars” conservatives seem to have arrived at their own mythology of “wokeness” that goes roughly as follows:
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Some subject or other is a trivial non-issue (because the conservatives themselves have never encountered it or been bothered by it).
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Some white “wokeness” activists accidentally stumbled across this subject and got all upset about it (because the conservatives themselves never see such criticisms until they’ve penetrated into the white-dominated mainstream).
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None of the white “wokeness” activists bothered asking any actual minorities what they thought about this subject (because the conservatives themselves generally have no significant contact with minority views and imagine that other white people don’t either).
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The white “wokeness” activists stirred up their “internet mobs” to “hysteria” and demanded that this trivial non-issue be changed (because conservative media and politicians have a vested interest in encouraging their audiences to believe that any liberal activism must be scary, lawless and misdirected).
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The terrified corporations bowed to the will of the “internet mobs” and made the change (because it doesn’t occur to the conservatives that multinational marketing departments have simply been more observant and aware about the ongoing evolution of such public-relations issues than they themselves have).
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Now “everybody” is burdened by having to cope with an “unnecessary” change to a trivial non-issue (because the conservatives are uncomfortable and resentful about the notion that something that they’ve never had a problem with could be considered undesirable enough to be worth changing. See also: the vested interests of conservative media and politicians in point 4).
Big fucking deal. Seriously?
What the fuck is “normal” anyway?
Excellent post, Kimstu. But I’ll take issue with one point:
No significant contact? That’s not fair. They sometimes look at mostly black message boards!
Projecting much?
That was beautiful
And I really want to add that even if there were no racial element to removing the word “normal” from shampoo, it would still be a good thing to do. It’s wrong, and potentially damaging to people (especially teens) with perfectly normal attributes to take one narrow set of attributes and call it “normal” and imply that every other normal attribute is somehow abnormal.
Maybe it’s worse if those labeled abnormal are in traditionally oppressed groups. But it’s bad even if it’s just white girls anxious about if they are okay.
Well that blew up. Obviously I should avoid making flippant comments before bed.
Some more serious thoughts:
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We can have equality in society without throwing away half of literature, so the comment I was replying to is a non sequitur.
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In this case they could have altered or updated the offending illustrations, in others like Huckleberry Finn there needs to be an explanation of differing attitudes in the past, and changes to society, from parents or schools.
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We’ve made a lot of progress towards equality and I used to be optimistic that this would continue, but for various reasons (Trump, Brexit, ‘anti-racism’ that strongly resembles racism) I’m no longer feeling so optimistic.
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Afaik there is a real issue here with big companies not always catering for all types of hair, charging more for products aimed at black people, etc. If there is a racial problem with shampoo labeling, it’s that the scale from dry to oily is based on white people’s hair, but using ‘average’ instead of ‘normal’ won’t change that. And there is a real issue with teenage girls feeling insecure about their appearance, which this change might help by about 0.1%.
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Probably the biggest problem in America today is the out of control tribalism where people attribute the worst possible motives to everyone they see as being on the other side. I know I can’t fix this, but it’s so serious and urgent that it’s really hard not to try.
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This message board that is dominated by left-wing, progressive posters has very few poc. I’ve seen two leave since I started posting regularly, and another one drastically cut participation. No one seems very concerned about this.
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Unilever did consult minorities, but lacking that voice here makes the thread seem wanky and pointless.
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This change is not a big issue, but it’s related to things that are. Those wider changes are very worrying.
Again there is a serious lack of first person views. It’s impossible to have a useful debate when one side is absent.
I am curious where the demographic information on SD members is located. I know some of us are POC because they’ve said so, but it’s not like one is required to post one’s ethnicity on every post so how can we know? Sure, odds are the majority here are White just like the majority of us are heterosexual, cis-gender, and so forth but I’m not aware of just how many POC we do or don’t have.